Tag Archives: personal finance

So, here’s a bright idea from Sweden designed to cut carbon emissions, resource consumption and garbage production. We think it might be a poverty fighter as well. Basically, Swedes should soon see a worthwhile tax break to fix their stuff. Those with a sense of thrift should get a lift from this policy. Canada needs this.

If this blog had a board of directors we would appoint Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver to upon it sit. He looked right into the dark heart of suburban poverty and social difficulty in a recent episode of his popular show to razor sharp effect. How so? He took the American sub prime auto loan industry out for a run, that’s how.

Oliver starts with the difficulty faced by many of his adopted country’s working poor: that trap between horrendously long commutes through the sprawl via public transit or buying some nasty set of wheels from a self-financing used car dealer. There’s some impressive research and real world tales of woe brought out and then capped off with a hilarious skit spoofing the whole sad machinery of extortionate high interest loans, overpriced shitboxes and repossessions. It has gotten so out of hand of late that some observers are seeing a repeat of the mortgage crisis of 2008 taking shape in US auto financing. We’ll see soon enough.

image: Samuel Bietenholz via Flickr/CC

Within the vast net of financial scams and debt-based swindles that compose much of the source code underlying modern American life is an education-related indenture of $1.3 trillion. This generational thrashing is the stuff of revolutions, surely. Is there not a single history degree out there in the hands of the direly mortgaged young Americans? Education was supposed to be one of the things motorizing the new economy.
Wasn’t it?

The Internet is pretty much now a necessity, especially when it comes to looking for a job or studying. ACORN Canada calls for a national affordable Internet policy in a new report so that low income Canadians won’t be left out of the advantages of connectivity.

At what point does a society consciously decide to move off of a real estate bubble? Can we even think of doing so? Recent data from a University of British Columbia professor reveals the standpoint of Canada’s youth in regard to the “benefits” of home ownership. A sample: it would take 23 years for a young person in Vancouver to save the downpayment on a typical mortgage from a typical wage.